The science website accompanies the complete solar eclipse with special reports from Antalya
Albert Kalifa
Above - partial solar eclipse below - total solar eclipse (from: Astronomy, Guide to Knowing the Heavens, Yigal Fat-El, Cosmos Publishing.
A total solar eclipse of 100% will occur this year on 29.03.06 and its center will pass in Turkey. In Israel it will show a deficiency of only 82%.
As you know, a solar eclipse is a situation in which the moon passes between us and the sun during the day and casts its shadow along a narrow and long strip on the rotating earth, in contrast to a lunar eclipse in which the earth is between the moon and the sun and casts its shadow on the moon.
The diameter of the sun is 400 times larger than the diameter of the moon (1,391,000 km compared to 3,476 km), but surprisingly, and completely by chance, the distance of the sun is also 400 times larger than the distance of the moon (150 compared to 0.4 million km), therefore the disk of the sun and the disk of the moon are visible The same size despite the huge differences in diameter and distance.
Important note: viewing a solar eclipse directly or through a telescope or binoculars is strictly prohibited.
You must be equipped with special glasses for viewing the sun, and anything else (sooted glass, several layers of black photographic film, a computer diskette, etc.) can only cause damage to the eyes.
A camera or video camera will be damaged by the intensity of the radiation.
There are three types of solar eclipses:
Total eclipse: the moon temporarily hides the entire disk of the sun and then darkness will prevail in the day and stars will be seen in a strip of 100 to 300 km wide for 2 to 7.5 minutes (depending on the distances from the sun and the moon, and the position of the eclipse according to the latitudes on Earth).
Partial eclipse: in which the moon hides only part of the sun's disc. The partial eclipse will extend along two strips on both sides of the total eclipse strip, with a width of several thousand km. The change in the intensity of the sun's light will hardly be felt until about 80% is covered.
Annular eclipse: the moon hides the center of the sun's disk and leaves part of the disk's edges not hidden, and the reason for this is the elliptical orbits:
Because the moon's orbit around the earth is not circular but elliptical (between 360 and 400 thousand km) and the earth's orbit around the sun is also elliptical (between 148 and 151 million km), therefore the distances and the apparent size of the sun and moon are constantly changing accordingly. In light of the above, an annular eclipse occurs when the sun is close (large) and/or the moon is far (small) and then the moon fails to hide the entire disk of the sun even when it passes exactly in front of the center of the sun.
A solar eclipse occurs only on the New Moon (Rosh Chodesh in Hebrew).
Since the plane of rotation of the moon is inclined by 5 degrees from the plane of rotation of the earth (the milka), no solar eclipse occurs every month, even though the moon crosses the milka plane between the earth and the sun once a month. And the reason for this is that they are not always on the same axis. Solar eclipses occur 2-5 times a year in different places.
The full eclipse path this year will begin in Brazil, pass through the Atlantic Ocean towards Ghana, Nigeria and Chad, from there to Libya and through the Mediterranean Sea will pass to the south and east of Turkey, to the east of the Black Sea and end in Siberia.
The record for the duration of the total eclipse will be in Chad this time and it will last there for about 4 minutes and another six seconds.
In Israel, as mentioned, there will be a partial eclipse of only 82%, which will start at 12.38:15.13 and end at XNUMX:XNUMX.
In Europe, Central Africa and South Asia there will be a partial eclipse of only about 50%.
The next and closest total eclipse to our area will be only in 21 years, on 02.08.2027, which will pass through Egypt.
the trip
In preparation for the eclipse, the Israeli Astronomical Society is organizing a trip to Turkey for which nearly 150 people have signed up so far. The trip will be held exactly to the center of the total eclipse, in the city of Manavgat, 85 km east of Antalya, and will last five days, from March 26 to March 30 (from Sunday to Thursday). One east towards Alanya and the other west towards Antalya.
The eclipse in Manavgat will begin as a partial eclipse at 12.38.19 and will last two hours and 35 minutes until 15.13.31.
The climax of the eclipse will be a total eclipse, starting at 13.54.56 and lasting 3 minutes and 45 seconds until 13.58.41.
We need to pray that the weather will brighten our faces and that the sky will be cloudless, because there is only a 60% chance of clear skies in Manavagat, otherwise we will have to flee to the north about 200 km towards Konya where the percentage of clouds is much lower. Some members of the association will bring mobile telescopes and special cameras in which they will Scientific photographs of the eclipse.
As we know, the elections in Israel will be held on March 28 and the eclipse on the 29th, so we lose elections several times in a lifetime, but gain a once-in-a-lifetime eclipse.
A solar eclipse is one of nature's most spectacular visions, even though it only lasts a few minutes. Before the start of the eclipse, you don't see the moon approaching the sun because it is by nature, non-luminous and the blue sky obscures its identity, then it crawls slowly and slowly takes over the sun's disk.
After about 80 minutes and towards the full eclipse, the light around starts to become strange, the animals are nervous, and tension is felt in the air. Then darkness comes suddenly, at a speed of 3250 km/h and covers the whole sun at once, it becomes dark without the orange colors of dusk, and then the corona light of the sun is revealed around the black disk of the moon, as huge tongues of plasma at a temperature of millions of degrees are thrown from the sun into space And all around suddenly start to show stars in the middle of the day. After a few minutes the whole drama ends just as suddenly, the sky clears and the sunlight returns control everything.
This short experience is undoubtedly a personal memory that cannot be described in words because nothing similar exists.
A special expert - March 2006 total solar eclipse
The Israeli Astronomical Society
Tomorrow: about deficiencies and superstitions
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